Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I know I've shown these books on my previous blog but someone asked me for more photos of these. These were the autograph books my kids took to Disneyworld last December. I used 7 Gypsies books because I wanted a spiral bound book that I would be able to open and fold over so that the characters could easily sign them. I made these books very simple. I knew that they would be handled A LOT; that they'd be in and out of bags constantly, handled by little fingers, sitting on tables with food during character meals, etc. So I made sure that they were cute yet simple. As you can probably see in some of the photos, there's pen marks (and probably food, too!) on the pages.

My son's book was made with the more traditional Disney papers. I just made diagonal strips of paper to do the cover. I didn't cover it with mod podge but I may do that next time to make it a little more durable.I didn't add a ton of ribbon on the wire so that it stayed easy to open. Inside the book I again left it very simple. On each page, I put a simple photo mat on one side and left the other side blank for the autograph. I purposely did not put any embellishments or make each page character specific because I knew that we would see tons of characters (which we did!) and I didn't want the books to be limited to specific ones. Also, the more stuff you put inside the book, the lumpier it is and it makes it more difficult for the characters to sign the book.

My daughter's book was, of course, a bit more girly. Her only request was to have Sleeping Beauty on the front.

As you can see compared to the photo above, the ribbon used to be a little different. What I found was that the ribbon kept coming loose from opening and closing. Next time I won't put ribbon down the front, but just on the wire part.

Inside, I did the same thing as my son's book - photo mat on one side, blank on the other. Her book had a few pockets to hold momentoes, park maps, etc. I think I may use these ones for both next time. As you can see, some of the characters signed sideways because it was easier to hold the book that way which quite honestly didn't matter to me. We're not going for perfection here!

In both books I left the last 5 pgs or so blank so that I could either let characters sign both sides (with no photo) or add a photo mat later.

I really enjoyed making these for my kids and they did, too. They thought they were pretty special to have the only autograph books at Disney like these ones! I also saved money and they were able to fit more autographs in these books. Don't get me wrong, the books at Disney are cute. But the book Olivia used last time only held 15 photos/autographs and I think cost around $13-$15. Her "mommy made" book held 25 photographs/autographs and the books only cost around $5-7 (plus papers). I think next time I'm going to use my Bind-It-All to make their books.

I also made a travel book for myself and I have some photos of that in my Two Peas gallery. You can click here to see it. If anyone wants to see more photos just leave me a comment!

Oh wow - those books are amazing! I'm a big fan of personalised autograph books - I spent hours decorating pages with pictures of the characters before I went to Disney World - the characters loved the fact that their pictures were on the pages and I got sprinkled with lots of pixie dust!

I am a wife & SAHM to my 3 wonderfully crazy kids. I love spending time with friends, sitting in sweats watching tv on a Friday night, blogging, surfing the net, Coke, baking, Twilight, acting totally silly with my hubby & kids, gardening, sewing and, of course, scrapbooking. I love to scrap til the wee hours of the night when the house is quiet. It's my hobby, my way of preserving precious memories, my sanity...you get the idea! This blog is all about my life, my hobbies and everything in between! Thanks for stopping by! Feel free to contact me at meandmyscraps{at}yahoo{dot}com